Public Records on Credit Reports: Bankruptcies, Liens, and Judgments.

You pull your credit report and find a section labeled “Public Records” with a bankruptcy in it, or with nothing in it at all, and a landlord’s background check still turned up a judgment you settled years ago. Both can be true at once. Public records on credit reports are court-derived entries, most prominently bankruptcies, tax liens and civil judgments, that once appeared as a separate section alongside the account data creditors furnish. The category shrank in 2017 and 2018, and what left the nationwide credit report did not leave the courthouse.

The stakes are not small. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts counted 549,577 nonbusiness bankruptcy filings in calendar 2025, an 11.2% rise over 2024, and each is a court record the nationwide bureaus can carry as a public-record entry for up to a decade. Section 1681c of the Fair Credit Reporting Act sets the outer reporting limits for public records, and the bureaus’ own standards, adopted under the National Consumer Assistance Plan, decide which records they carry at all.

What follows covers what public records appear on a credit report today, why tax liens and judgments came off, how a bankruptcy is reported and how long it stays, the errors a dispute can correct, what a discharge does to the debts behind it, and where judgments and liens still surface. Criminal-record reporting on tenant-screening and employment-screening reports follows separate rules and is outside that scope.

Bankruptcy Is the Only Public Record Left on an Equifax, Experian or TransUnion Report

Bankruptcy is the only public record the three nationwide bureaus report today. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s December 2019 retrospective on the change states it plainly: bankruptcies are now the only type of public record on nationwide credit reports. A bankruptcy appears as its own public-record entry carrying the chapter (Chapter 7, Chapter 11 or Chapter 13), the filing date, the discharge or dismissal date where there is one, and the case number from the bankruptcy court’s docket.

Civil judgments and tax liens are no longer on the standard report sold to mortgage, auto and card lenders. The records still exist in the underlying court and recorder files, and they remain available to specialty consumer reporting agencies that serve landlords, employers and certain lenders. If an old judgment sat on a pre-2018 report, it should be gone from the current one.

The National Consumer Assistance Plan Removed Judgments and Tax Liens in Two Steps

The National Consumer Assistance Plan launched in March 2015 in response to a settlement between the three nationwide bureaus and over 30 state attorneys general, according to the CFPB’s 2019 retrospective. The CFPB was not a party to that settlement. The plan set public-record data standards that took effect on July 1, 2017. The CFPB’s February 2018 Quarterly Consumer Credit Trends report describes them: every civil public record had to carry a name, an address, and a Social Security number or date of birth before it could appear on a credit record, and the bureaus had to refresh that courthouse data at least every 90 days.

Court records often lack a date of birth or a full Social Security number, and county courts do not push updates on a 90-day cycle, so most civil judgments and many tax liens could not meet the standard. They came off in two steps:

1. July 1, 2017. All civil judgments and almost half of tax liens were removed. The CFPB measured the shift in its Consumer Credit Panel, a nationally representative sample of about five million de-identified credit records: in June 2017, 6% of consumers had a civil judgment or tax lien on their credit record, and after the standards took effect 1.4% had a tax lien and none had a civil judgment.
2. April 16, 2018. Equifax, Experian and TransUnion removed all remaining tax lien data, paid and unpaid alike, so the 1.4% figure describes a nine-month interval that no longer exists.

The score effect was smaller than the headlines suggested. The CFPB found that about 4% of consumers who had a judgment or lien in June 2017, or 0.24% of consumers overall, gained enough to move into a higher credit score band.

Section 1681c Sets the Ceiling, and the Bureaus Report Chapter 13 for Less

The Fair Credit Reporting Act does not tell a bureau to report a public record. It sets how long one may be reported. Section 1681c(a) bars:

• Bankruptcy cases that antedate the report by more than 10 years from the order for relief. In a voluntary case the filing itself is the order for relief under 11 U.S.C. 301(b), so the clock runs from the filing date.
• Civil suits and civil judgments more than seven years from the date of entry, or until the governing statute of limitations has expired, whichever is longer.
• Paid tax liens more than seven years from the date of payment.
• Other adverse items older than seven years, except records of convictions of crimes, which carry no federal limit.

The 10-year ceiling is written for title 11 cases generally, so it covers Chapter 13 as well as Chapter 7. The seven-year treatment of a completed Chapter 13 is the bureaus’ own voluntary practice, a recognition that the filer repaid creditors through a court-supervised plan, and not a statutory deadline. Section 1681c(b) adds an exception most readers never hear about: none of these limits applies to a report pulled for a credit transaction of $150,000 or more, life insurance with a face amount of $150,000 or more, or a job paying $75,000 a year or more. Our bankruptcy reporting guide covers the reporting-window mechanics in detail.

A Bankruptcy Reports Twice: One Public Record, Then Every Account It Discharged

A bankruptcy reaches your file through two separate channels. The public-record entry is drawn from the bankruptcy court’s docket and lists the chapter, the filing date, the case number, the filing district, and, after the case closes, the discharge or dismissal date. Separately, each creditor whose debt was included keeps reporting its own account, and after discharge that account should show a “discharged in bankruptcy” or “included in bankruptcy” status.

The two channels run on different clocks. The public record follows the bankruptcy window above. Each account follows its own seven-year window under Section 605(c)(1), which runs from the delinquency that preceded the charge-off or collection, so an account that went delinquent a year before the filing can leave the report years before the public record does. Our Chapter 7 versus Chapter 13 comparison walks through how each chapter reports.

What a Bankruptcy Does to a Score Depends on the File It Lands On

A bankruptcy filing produces a significant initial score decline, and its size depends on what the file looked like before. A file with a long clean history has more for the bankruptcy to take away than one already carrying late payments and collections, so the same filing costs those two files very different amounts.

The weight falls with time as accounts opened after the filing build on-time history of their own. When the reporting window closes, the public-record entry comes off and stops counting at all. Our guide to rebuilding after bankruptcy covers the new-account side.

Five Errors a Section 611 Dispute Can Correct on a Bankruptcy Entry

A bankruptcy public-record entry is disputable under Section 611 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act on the same terms as any account. The bureau must complete a reasonable reinvestigation within 30 days, and under Section 611(a)(5)(A) an item found inaccurate or incomplete, or one that cannot be verified, must be deleted or modified. The errors worth checking:

1. Wrong filing date, which moves the date the entry falls off.
2. Wrong chapter, such as a Chapter 13 reported as a Chapter 7, which can add three years to the entry under bureau practice.
3. Wrong or missing discharge date, or a dismissed case reported as discharged, or the reverse.
4. Duplicate reporting, the same case appearing twice.
5. Discharged accounts still reporting as live. After discharge, every account included in the case should report a discharged status, a zero balance, and a closed designation. An account that still shows a balance, a past-due amount or an active status is not reporting the discharge’s legal effect, and it is disputable under Section 611.

The fifth is the one most often missed, because it sits in the account section rather than next to the bankruptcy. Our dispute walkthrough covers the letter itself.

When a Public Record Belongs to Someone Else

The matching problem that pushed judgments off the report has not disappeared from credit files. In our own read of the CFPB’s public Consumer Complaint Database for July 2025 through June 2026, of 3,482,718 complaints recorded in the CFPB’s public Consumer Complaint Database under “Incorrect information on your report,” 66.9% said the information belongs to someone else, 18.4% said the account information was incorrect, and 8.7% said the account status was incorrect. Complaints recorded in that database are unverified consumer allegations; the CFPB does not confirm the facts alleged, the CFPB attributes much of the recent volume to credit repair organizations and automated filers, and a high count tracks company size as well as conduct.

For public records the failure looks like this: a bankruptcy filed by a relative with the same name, a former spouse’s case attached through a shared address, or a record matched on a name alone. A bankruptcy that is not yours is inaccurate information, and it is a Section 611 dispute backed by the case number and the court’s own record of who filed. Where the mix-up runs deeper than one record, our mixed-file guide covers how two consumers’ data ends up in one file.

A Judgment That Still Shows on a Bureau Report Is a Dispute Basis

A civil judgment should not appear on a current Equifax, Experian or TransUnion report after the July 2017 removal. One that does is either a reporting error or a record the bureau cannot support under its own data standard, and either way it is a Section 611 dispute. The bureaus have announced no reversal of the 2017 removal, so read the current report closely to confirm what is actually there before filing.

A judgment removed from the credit report can still appear on specialty reports drawn from court records, including tenant-screening and employment-screening reports and some specialty lender products. The judgment also keeps its legal force. The Pew Charitable Trusts reported in September 2025 that in 35 states and the District of Columbia a judgment entered in a debt lawsuit can follow a person for at least a decade, and 18 of those jurisdictions allow it to be renewed if it is not paid. If a rental or job denial cites a judgment your credit report does not show, request the specialty report that produced the decision under Section 1681m.

Tax Liens Left the Report in April 2018, and the Lien Stayed on the Property

Federal and state tax liens were both removed from the nationwide credit report on the same matching grounds, almost half in July 2017 and the rest by April 2018. The Internal Revenue Service still files a Notice of Federal Tax Lien with the county recorder when a taxpayer defaults, and that notice remains a public record. Only the bureau-side reporting stopped.

An outstanding lien is still enforceable. It attaches to property, surfaces in title searches on a sale or refinance, and can appear on specialty consumer reports and on commercial credit reports used to evaluate businesses. The clean credit report says nothing about whether the lien itself has been paid or released.

A Bankruptcy Follows Every Application Until the Window Closes, and Mortgages Add a Second Clock

Every lender that pulls a nationwide report during the reporting window sees the bankruptcy, and each lender sets its own policy on it. Mortgage programs are the exception that publish their rules, and they count from the discharge or dismissal date, not from the day the entry leaves the report.

Fannie Mae’s Chapter 13 rule is easy to misread: the four-year period after a case ends without a discharge runs from the dismissal date, not the filing date. Our guide to buying a house after bankruptcy covers the waiting periods in detail, and our mortgage credit-score guide covers the broader qualification picture.

The Discharge Injunction Under 11 U.S.C. § 524 Bars Collecting a Discharged Debt

A discharged debt cannot be collected from you personally, by the original creditor or by anyone who bought the account. Under 11 U.S.C. § 524(a)(2), a discharge operates as an injunction against any action or act to collect, recover or offset the debt as a personal liability of the debtor. In Taggart v. Lorenzen (2019), the Supreme Court held that a bankruptcy court may hold a creditor in civil contempt for violating a discharge order where there is no fair ground of doubt that the order barred the creditor’s conduct.

Two limits sit inside that rule. The injunction runs against personal liability, so a lien on collateral survives the case and a secured lender keeps its claim against the asset. And 11 U.S.C. § 523(a) excepts certain debts from discharge altogether, among them most tax debts, domestic support obligations, and educational loans absent a showing of undue hardship.

If a collector contacts you on a debt you believe was discharged, get a copy of the discharge order and the schedules, confirm the specific debt was listed, and answer the collector in writing with the case information. Continued collection after that notice is the basis for a motion in bankruptcy court to enforce the discharge injunction. Consult a bankruptcy attorney before filing one; the remedies run through the court that issued the discharge.

Foreclosure Reports on the Mortgage Account, Not as a Public Record

A foreclosure appears on your credit report as a status on the mortgage account, not as a separate public-record entry. The mortgage account updates to show the foreclosure, and the derogatory entry sits in the account section rather than the public-records section. The reporting window is the standard seven years under Section 1681c, running from the first delinquency that led to it.

The court filing in a judicial-foreclosure state is a public record, and the bureaus do not add it as a separate public-record entry. Our guide on foreclosure credit reporting covers the account-level reporting in detail.

No Dispute Removes an Accurate Bankruptcy Before Its Window Closes

An accurate bankruptcy inside its reporting window stays on the report. The bureau will verify it against the court’s docket and confirm it on any reinvestigation. The paths to early removal are three: a successful Section 611 dispute because the entry is inaccurate (a wrong date, a wrong chapter, a duplicate, or a case that is not yours); a vacated bankruptcy order from the bankruptcy court, which is rare; or the natural end of the reporting window.

Some credit-repair services market “bankruptcy removal” programs that promise early deletion. A bankruptcy that was properly filed, properly docketed and is reported within its window is verifiable against the court record. The Credit Repair Organizations Act bars credit-repair companies from making untrue or misleading statements and from charging before services are performed, which makes a paid promise to delete an accurate bankruptcy something to check against that statute before signing anything.

Specialty Consumer Reporting Agencies Still Carry Judgments and Liens

Specialty consumer reporting agencies, including tenant-screening, employment-screening and check-acceptance services, still report civil judgments and tax liens drawn from county and federal court records. They are consumer reporting agencies under Section 603(f) of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, but the National Consumer Assistance Plan bound only Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. The CFPB’s 2022 Tenant Background Checks Market Report found many examples of tenant screening reports appearing to include statutorily prohibited obsolete information, and found that screening companies may lack procedures to assure removal of records that were expunged, sealed or obsolete. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau maintains a published list of consumer reporting agencies that includes specialty agencies handling public-record data.

Criminal records follow the same split. The nationwide bureaus do not carry arrests or convictions, while a background-check report can, and Section 1681c(a)(5) puts no federal time limit on reporting a conviction. Our tenant screening guide and our LexisNexis consumer report guide cover the two agency types most likely to hold these records.

Your rights against a specialty agency match your rights against the bureaus:

• A free file disclosure. A nationwide specialty consumer reporting agency, defined at Section 603(x) as one keeping nationwide files on tenant history, employment history, check writing history, medical records or insurance claims, must provide one free disclosure on request every 12 months under Section 1681j(a)(1)(C).
• A free copy after a denial. A landlord or employer who takes adverse action based on the report must give you notice under Section 1681m, including the right to a free copy from that agency within 60 days.
• A Section 611 dispute with the specialty agency, not with the three bureaus, identifying the specific inaccurate or unverifiable information with your documentation. The agency must investigate within 30 days and correct or delete what cannot be verified.
• Damages under Section 1681n for willful violations or Section 1681o for negligent ones.

Which Tool Can Check a Bankruptcy Public Record and Every Account It Discharged

The decision here is narrow. A bankruptcy writes one public record and then a discharged status onto every account it touched, at each bureau separately, and the dispute work is checking every one of those fields for the five errors above. So the question is which tool reads all three reports, flags a discharged account still showing a balance, and puts a letter in your hands for each one.

Every price is that company’s own published rate, read off that company’s own site on September 15, 2026. Trustpilot scores and review counts as published on September 24, 2026.

The free option also sits where a post-bankruptcy borrower is most exposed, at the next application. Eduardo F., in a 1-star Trustpilot review of Credit Karma dated September 14, 2026, wrote: “Credit Karma gets people to apply for loans or credit cards with outstanding approval odds which I believe to be a complete lie. So they make me hurt your credit score with hard inquiries, when in actuality you have 0 approval odds, not outstanding.”

What CreditRefresh Checks on a Bankruptcy Entry, and What It Leaves to a Bankruptcy Attorney

We pull your reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion through a secure authorized feed and inspect every entry, including the bankruptcy public record, for inconsistent filing dates, discharge dates, chapter designations and case numbers. We also flag accounts that should report a discharged status and do not, which is the error most often left behind after a case closes. For each item you choose to challenge, we draft a print-ready FCRA dispute letter under Section 611.

The volume is why doing it by hand stalls. In CreditRefresh’s September 18, 2026 analysis of paying-member data, 97.7% of paying members have at least one negative tradeline entry, and the average member carries 30 across the bureaus, with a median of 25. The same account may appear at more than one bureau, and a negative entry is not automatically inaccurate or disputable.

We do not file bankruptcies, review cases as an attorney, or bring discharge-enforcement motions. If you need those, consult a licensed bankruptcy attorney. Our role is limited to identifying credit-bureau reporting inaccuracies and drafting dispute correspondence. Bureaus determine dispute outcomes, and a score depends on the rest of the file. The price is $49.99 a month with no setup fee and no contract, and you can cancel anytime. Everything we draft, you read and sign, and nothing goes out without your approval.

It is backed by our 100% money-back guarantee: members who work the full program and see no bureau score rise above where they started can claim back every Refresh Monitoring payment. It is a refund promise, never a score promise.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I have a public record on my credit report?

On a current Equifax, Experian or TransUnion report, a public record is a bankruptcy, because bankruptcies are the only public record the nationwide bureaus still carry. If the case is yours, it stays for up to 10 years from filing, or seven years for a completed Chapter 13 under bureau practice. If it is not yours, or it lists the wrong chapter or dates, dispute it under Section 611.

Can you remove public records from your credit report?

An accurate bankruptcy inside its window cannot be removed early, since the bureau verifies it against the court docket. An inaccurate one can be corrected or deleted through a Section 611 dispute, and a judgment or tax lien still showing on a nationwide report is itself a dispute basis, because the bureaus removed both by April 2018.

What does it mean when someone says “no public records” on a credit report?

It means the report shows no bankruptcy. Since the April 2018 tax lien removal, a bankruptcy is the only public record a nationwide report can show, so “no public records” says nothing about judgments, liens or criminal records held in court files or on specialty reports.

Why does other people’s information appear on my credit report?

Usually because a record was matched to your file on incomplete identifiers, such as a shared name or a past address. It is the largest single issue in credit reporting complaints: 66.9% of the 3,482,718 complaints recorded under “Incorrect information on your report” in the CFPB’s public Consumer Complaint Database for July 2025 through June 2026 said the information belongs to someone else. Those are unverified consumer allegations. Information that is not yours is disputable under Section 611.

Why is my ex-wife’s address on my credit report?

Addresses reach a file through the accounts and applications tied to it, so a former joint account or an application listing a shared address can carry one onto your report. An address is identifying information, not a debt, but a wrong one is also how another person’s records get matched to you. Our guide to removing old addresses covers the dispute.

Can someone check your credit without you knowing?

A company with a permissible purpose under the FCRA can pull your report, and some pulls, such as prescreened offers and account reviews, are soft inquiries that do not affect a score and that you may not be told about at the time. Under Section 609, the file disclosure you can request from each bureau must identify everyone who procured your report for a credit purpose in the prior year. Our soft versus hard inquiries guide explains which is which.

Do criminal records show up on a credit report?

No. Equifax, Experian and TransUnion do not carry arrests or convictions. They appear on criminal background checks from specialty agencies, and Section 1681c(a)(5) sets no federal time limit on reporting a conviction.

Is Chapter 13 reported for seven years or ten?

The statute allows 10 years for any bankruptcy chapter. The bureaus remove a completed Chapter 13 seven years after filing as a voluntary practice, while Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 stay for the full 10.

This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. The Fair Credit Reporting Act and related regulations are complex, and outcomes depend on individual circumstances. Consumers with specific questions about their credit reports or rights under federal law should consult a licensed attorney or contact the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau directly.

CreditRefresh reads your bankruptcy entry and every account it discharged at all three bureaus, and drafts a letter for each field that looks wrong, for you to review and sign. Backed by a 100% money-back guarantee.

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